HE'S FINALLY HERE!! After putting this off for like a month i finished up Donovan's character page, which is kinda ironic consdiering he's the reason the au got it's name. To put it simply, this spawned from me asking myself the question I'm certain most furnace fans have at some point: What if Donovan survived? Then I asked myself how that would work, and one obvious solution came to mind: What if he was immune to the nectar? if he never went through a blacksuit transformation, what was stopping the others from yoinking him out of the infirmary while the wheezers weren't looking? Then I started messing with the nectar & fleshing out how the furnace organization/prison works and it got out of hand (I'll get to that at some point in the next 50 years) but yeah!
Tldr: Its a Donovan lives AU!! (and also a whole bunch of other stuff but shhh we dont need to talk about that yet)
words: 1429. AO3 in replies
Even in another universe, Zee begs Alex to go home.
(AKA: Anything can be Escape from Furnace if you try hard enough, but when you just watched the Long Walk it actually isn't hard at all)
"It ain't that bad now, is it?"
Alex doesn't hear him right away, hypnotized at the miles of concrete road in front of them. His eyes glaze as he glares at the vanishing point far in the distance, where the lines of gravel meet treetop meet sky - the line of the horizon, its weak, red sun blurred by the fog of evening a cruel finish line that he never closes in on no matter how long he marches. The stink of shit and sweat is a mere background noise to the symphony of agony that is his body, the throbbing of his bare feet and the tang of salt on his lips, but the sweet copper scent of free flowing blood cuts through the haze. The body against him jostles, a gentle bid for attention, a cry for mercy.
"Alex?" Zee says, and it's the softness of it, the almost-plea for his reassurance that breaks Alex from his stupor. He tunes out the sound of footstep and machinery and the growls of skinless mutts to zero in on the other boy's voice, and oh -
Oh, he wishes he did not have the obligation to meet Zee's eyes - the vivacious blue now dull, a watery, empty husk and Zee's face looks to Alex without really seeing. The once-rich rust brown of his skin has grown ashy under the sheen of sweat plastered over his face and neck, mingling the the blood and bile that dribbles from his nose and down his mouth, pooling into a mess on his shirt. His head bobbles listlessly on his shoulders, like it weighs the world, even if Alex knows that isn't true - because he is the one carrying it, now, carrying the life of this boy on his shoulders, Zee's feet moving but barely touching the ground as he is hoisted forward with each tandem step.
"No," Alex says, as Zee's aimless eyes search his face for answers. The lie kills him. "No, no, it's not that bad."
"An internal hemorrhage, maybe," Marlow wheezes from the other side of the road. His voice, grating and asthmatic, rear an ugly rage in Alex's chest. "Pretty common -"
"Shut up, Green," Alex snipes. The comment itself was not a proud one, Alex knows, seeing no satisfaction or intention on the pained, pale face limping with his hand on his heart, but the words themselves sting more than the days of sunburn, the cuts in his feet. They've gotten this far, Alex thinks, even though there is no relief in the delusion - there was only going to be one way this ended. The three of them, just one more mile, one more mile, one more moment -"
"My dad," Zee says, his voice warbling, "he always said my nosebleeds were from the TV. Said I'd sit too close, that my brain was straining from all the bright lights." The breath of a ghost of a laugh, but there is no energy for even a twitch of the lip as Zee loses himself in reverie. "He'd have me sit at his feet, right in front of his armchair. Wish I'd be sitting there right now."
"Yeah?" Alex asks. Words are a balm now, if only to distract. "We'll get you to him then," he continues, "put on a nice documentary while you rest after all this. Just keep walking."
"I can't," Zee grunts, "'m sorry, I can't, wanna go home" and the way he trips over the aimless dance of is feet would have Alex sprawled to the ground with him if he were not sharing his weight.
"Don't apologize," Donovan says through pressed lips. Alex looks past Zee's gaunt face to stare at the other boy's stalwart profile - Donovan marches on at Zee's other shoulder, his third musketeer shouldering the rest of his weight like a buttress but refusing to look at either of them. He keeps his eyes forward, knotted brow to the sky and chin tilted up in what the cameras might catch as dignity, though Alex can see the unshed tears gleaming, threatening to fall. "You've given this your all, man. Won't let you talk like that."
"'m sorry-"
"No," and it's a chorus on either side of him. "You don't apologize for how far we've gone, how far you've brought us," Donovan says, "not for being our friend."
"Yeah?" Zee asks, dreamily.
Our friend, Alex thinks - a fool, for thinking he could make some friends here. This trail of blood and screams. "Yeah."
It's a few, silent strides before Zee speaks again - he keeps his feet in step with the other two, even as his soles drag across the ground. "You'll do something for me?"
"Anything," Alex says immediately. He watches as Zee reaches for the chains around his neck. At first, he thinks he's going for his tag, and Alex can't stand the thought of bringing it with him, the thought of it making to the final mile bouncing off the chest of any kid that wasn't him. Instead, Zee lifts a smaller, daintier chain, its pendant glinting once as its pendulum swing catches the light where it dangles.
"You give this to my dad, if you make it," he says. Alex feels the gentle weight of it in his hand, the six points of the gentle star pricking into his palms as he clings to it like the blessing it was, the apology he never needed. "To my mom, my dad - my brothers and sisters. Tell 'em I'm sorry-" And Donovan is shaking his head again, Alex feeling the tug of his grip as he jostles Zee forward inch by inch, a devastated encouragement to just make it one more step as if it will make a difference - "that I love them."
"Of course, of course," Alex says. Donovan nods against his clenched jaw.
"Promise me you won't look when they do it?" Zee says, and Alex wants to scream, sob against the hard lump stinging his throat.
"I won't let you-"
"Promise me," Zee says, his nervous energy pressing the urgency of this last request. "Promise me, please, please," he begs, his aimless eyes frantically darting between Alex and Donovan.
"Zee," Alex whispers. Watching Donovan nod, his face warped and stiff with grief, would be a betrayal if he wasn't doing so himself. The horizon becomes a blur through the tears. He is grateful Zee will let him be a coward, for this one awful moment. "Please."
"Let me go home, Alex," Zee says. With the last of his strength, he wrings his arms out of their shared grasp. Alex and Donovan resist, at first, and Zee has to struggle - Alex grabbing his damp shirt in his dirty nails, Donovan twisting as if to pull him close, as if he could hold him to his body and carry him like a child the rest of the way. Just a little longer, he wants to beg, just a little more. "Please, I wan' go home, let me go home-"
"Fuck-" Donovan curses as Zee slips from them, a hiss and a sob whistled between clenched teeth. Alex immediately closes rank, wrapping his arm around Donovan's shoulder in an attempt to fill the now empty space where they had only just held Zee between them. He feels an arm around his waist, the fingers a painful grip on the skin of his stomach. "I can't, I fucking can't."
"Warning: Second warning, Number 6, Hatcher," a uniformed voice announces through the screeching megaphone, and they all shiver like the reaper is at their back. The dogs begin to bark, the rattling of their metal leashes echoing the death knell as they strain to reap the remains of the next kill. Zee's voice, his mantra, let me go home, I'm going home, is lost in the melee of noise behind him, in the staccato rhythm of their footfalls.
"You know what I want more than anything in the world right now?" Donovan says, weakly. Alex looks to him, to the beautiful boy masked behind the layers of dirt and sweat and scar, to the kind eyes crushed beneath his mournful brow. Alex stays quiet, the two of them keeping eyes front, deprived of watching the last moments their friend breathes - to watch the heart they had warned each other not to bring with them on the walk be splattered against the pavement. The third warning is called out.
"A burger," Donovan answers, and they leave behind the loaded click of the carbine, bracing themselves against each other as they wait for the pull of the trigger.
